Taiwan Today

Excavating prehistoric sites sheds light on Taiwan’s past.
 

Near the main train station in southeastern Taiwan’s Taitung City stands a relic that remains a mystery to this day. According to the National Museum of Prehistory (NMP), some believe it was simply a support beam for a building, while others theorize that it was meant to be a monument to an unknown person. Whatever the truth, the stone pillar with a crescent-shaped top continues to stir the imagination and spark interest in Taiwan’s prehistoric past.
 

The pillar is situated within Peinan Site Park, which is named after the Chinese term for the Puyuma Indigenous group that still lives in the area. The NMP is headquartered nearby and has administered the park since it was established in 2002. The facility displays and cares for a large number of artifacts recovered during construction of Taitung Station in the 1980s. The site contained one of the largest clusters of slate coffins found anywhere in the world, with more than 2,000 sarcophagi and countless funerary objects. Now the 30-hectare park is home to one of the 11 national-level archaeological sites recognized under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, which was promulgated in 1982 largely in response to the groundbreaking finds in Taitung. Visitors to the park can tour an excavation site of residential and burial remains dating back 3,000 years that have been preserved in situ.
 

According to NMP Acting Director Tsai Chih-reen (蔡志忍), the late Neolithic was a flourishing period of civilization in Taiwan, as demonstrated by the evident skill in crafting tools and ornaments of jade, ceramic and stone and the sophisticated rice cultivation techniques seen at the unearthed settlement. While the museum is the highest-level organization of its kind in the country entrusted by the Ministry of Culture (MOC) to house collections, arrange exhibitions, conduct research and promote public education in the field of archaeology, the MOC’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage (BOCH) has helped local governments set up other museums, archaeological site culture parks and education centers across the country. One of the newest is Kaohsiung’s Fengpitou Archeology Education Center, which opened to the public in February 2023 in the southern city and is situated close to a Neolithic site dating from around 5,200 to 2,400 years ago.

A Discipline Born

Currently, there are 55 officially designated national-, municipal- and county-level archaeological sites around the country, with an additional 79 catalogued sites, 2,926 locations surveyed by researchers and dozens of sites under investigation in the waters off Taiwan’s main and outlying islands. “As part of our tangible cultural heritage, archaeological sites bear witness to the interaction between humans and their environments,” BOCH Director-General Chen Chi-ming (陳濟民) said. “Since these remnants are easily damaged and exist in a specific location, our principle is to preserve them in situ.” Registered archaeological sites in the country date back as far as 30,000 years to the Paleolithic—like the Baxiandong sea-eroded caves in southeastern Taiwan’s Taitung County—through the early, middle and late stages of the Neolithic to the Metal Ages and the arrival of Spanish and Dutch colonial powers in the 1620s.

“Before the Age of Exploration, Taiwan was a regional hub that traded with Southeast Asia and what is now China, among other places,” Chen said. He believes this fact lends credence to the theory that Taiwan was the origin of the Austronesian peoples who later migrated throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania. “These discoveries shed light on Taiwan’s cultural connections, geographical relevance and role in global prehistory,” he added.
 

The inception of archaeology as an academic field in Taiwan began during Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945) with prehistoric finds at Zhishanyan in Taipei City in 1896 by researchers from what is now the University of Tokyo. The following year, the team discovered a similar site in the city’s north on a small hill called Yuanshan. Subsequent excavations at the two locations uncovered cultural layers spanning 5,000 years from the early Neolithic to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
 

In 1928, National Taiwan University’s predecessor, Taipei Imperial University, was established and among its offerings were ethnography classes on Indigenous peoples. The curriculum gradually developed into an anthropology department, and in the post-World War II era, anthropologists and other experts from the West came to Taiwan to conduct field work alongside local professors and students. These partnerships introduced archaeological and anthropological methods and concepts from overseas and laid a solid foundation for the discipline’s development in Taiwan, Chen said. The interdisciplinary approaches introduced during such joint projects are also widely thought to have been a driving force behind the emerging Taiwan studies field.

Dual Priorities

A need for legislative protection of archaeological sites emerged in the economic boom of the 1980s as land was developed in large-scale construction projects. The government had to carefully balance preserving the past and promoting urban growth, Chen said. In a recent example, a 2019 construction project on Heping Island, which lies off the coast of the northern port city of Keelung, uncovered shell and artifact fragments that were identified as prehistoric. The findings were reported to the relevant authorities, and construction was halted to allow for a survey of the site. Heping Island was already known to contain historical remains due to an ongoing dig at the location of a nearly four-century-old Spanish church conducted under the BOCH’s Regeneration of Historic Sites Project. Now, Keelung’s first archaeology education center is being set up on the island and will form an integral part of the local conservation and cultural tourism network, according to the city government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau.
 

Chen believes archaeological sites have huge potential as tourist destinations, citing the large number of visitors fascinated by finds dating as far back as 3,900 B.C. at the Sannai Maruyama Jomon Culture Center in Japan’s Aomori prefecture. Similarly, the NMP and its Peinan site are proving popular with sightseers. Since opening, the museum and park have sold more than 8 million tickets in total, according to the Tourism Administration under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. “Visitors express awe at seeing things that are thousands of years old,” NMP’s Tsai said. “Taiwan can increase its soft power by promoting the country’s prehistoric sites internationally.”
 

Over the last few years, the museum has enhanced visitor experiences via interactive displays. For instance, many artifacts in the collection have been reproduced with advanced 3D scanning and printing facilities, allowing visitors to directly touch replicas in the original shape, size, color and texture. Central and local governments, as well as private companies, are increasing resources invested in developing this specialized field, allowing both archaeology students and amateur enthusiasts to work alongside professionals, Tsai said. Tainan City and Hualien County in southern and eastern Taiwan, respectively, have already formed teams to conduct surveys and excavations. The museum’s acting director sees this cross-sector, interorganizational collaboration as key to further advancing archaeological research and public awareness across the country.